In January, Grant County invited the public to attend a public information meeting in Silver City, to discuss and solicit feedback on the development of a County Community Wildfire Protection Plan, or CWPP. A CWPP is a plan designed to identify and mitigate wildfire hazards to communities and infrastructure in the area where homes and businesses meet the natural landscape; the area called the wildland-urban interface or WUI. The CWPP makes recommendations for hazardous fuels reduction, public outreach and education, structural ignitability reduction and fire response capabilities. A CWPP is designed to assist the County in ensuring that a future catastrophic wildfire is avoided or mitigated by assessing areas at risk and recommending measures to decrease that risk.

This CWPP effort builds upon a long history of collaboration. Since the early 2000s, stakeholders representing municipal, county, state and federal agencies, have been working together to address wildfire risk and hazard to the Grant County community. This culminated in the original Grant County CWPP in 2006, which has been updated over subsequent years. This group reconvened in October 2019 with the intent to review and revise the latest version of the CWPP and begin compiling information and meeting to collaboratively develop this revised 2020 CWPP document. Grant County are now looking for input from the public on the draft 2020 CWPP.

The public will be able to access the document through the “Notices” section of the county website: www.grantcountynm.gov 

The public is invited to download the CWPP and provide written comments to Project Manager Victoria Amato – vamato@swca.com. The public is also invited to provide input via a Facebook page established for the project https://www.facebook.com/GrantCountyCWPP/ . Comments will be accepted through March 16.

The 2020 CWPP will be a guiding document for Grant County Fire and Emergency Managers, as well as agencies who manage lands within the County boundary. The CWPP is designed to serve County residents, and as such we encourage your interest and engagement in the process. For more information please contact Grant County Fire Management Officer- Randy Villa at rvilla@grantcountynm.gov or 575-574-0035.